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BY ERIC MODEL
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
JOURNEYS INTO NEW JERSEY
Many folks don't have much pause for Camden.
Its reputation for crime, corruption, decay and as the place just across from Philly, stops too many from looking at it as a place of substance and history.
Camden is known these days for its efforts to bring tourists in - the light rail makes stops for attractions such as the Aquarium, the USS New Jersey and a minor league ballpark along the banks of the Delaware.
Beyond these efforts, Camden has a lot more worth considering.
Many are familiar with the corporate presence of the Campbell Soup Company. It was in the late 1800's when Joseph Campbell and an associate began marketing a condensed soup and started the Campbell Soup Company. Campbell has been in town in one form or another ever since. At its height it employed thousands and featured an exhibition place the most prestigious collection of soup tureens in the world. Its factory was famous for "soup can" water tanks that adorned its roof. In 1992, when the factory was destroyed, efforts were made to "Save the Can," but somehow even the last ‘soup can' was lost. Camden, though, retains a presence in town.
Less known is that Camden has played an important role in American popular music.It all started in 1895 when a customer came to a Camden repair shop owned by Eldridge R. Johnson and asked him to repair an Edison phonograph. As he worked to repair the phonograph, Johnson had a revelation – he decided to create a less clumsy phonograph that could use flat disks rather than cylinders as records.
Eldridge R. Johnson founded the Victor Talking Machine Company.
From 1901 through 1929, Camden was headquarters of the Victor Talking Machine Company, and thereafter to its successor RCA Victor, the world's largest manufacturer of phonographs (Victrolas) and phonograph records for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century.
Camden came to be known as "The Greatest Musical Center in the Whole World."
RCA Victor contained one of the first commercial recording studios in the United States, where Enrico Caruso, among others, recorded. The Victor building is famous as the "Nipper Building" depicting RCA's famous "His Master's Voice" trademark in its tower windows.
Camden saw the greats of music come to town to record at the RCA site. They included Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Ted Weems, Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Isam Jones, Fats Waller, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Jimmie Rodgers, Alberta Hunter, The Carter Family, Jascha Heifetz, Arturo Toscanini, Woody Gutherie and John McCormick.
Victor's original recording studio, on the southwest corner of Front and Cooper Street (now a parking lot for The Victor loft apartments), was surrounded on all sides by factory buildings. Another studio location was the top floor of a production factory on the northwest corner of Front and Cooper Street, which now houses the Camden Board of Education.
The original recording studio was too small to fit an entire orchestra, so the top floor studio was used by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Symphony to fit all of their musicians. And when the factory buildings created excess noise, which interfered with recording, the company decided to purchase Trinity Baptist Church in 1918 for its good acoustics. It was used for orchestral recordings until 1942. It's still there too.
Along with the church, the company acquired a pipe organ, used by musicians such as Fats Waller, who recorded, "Ain't Misbehavin' " and Jelly Roll Morton and his orchestra, who recorded "Down My Way" and "Try Me Out" in 1929.
Besides Morton, many of the era's most beloved artists in genres as diverse as blues, gospel, opera, and what we today would call country recorded in the former church. These artists include Enrico Caruso, Irish tenor John McCormack, Jimmie Rogers, and The Carter Family, who recorded "The Wildwood Flower," on May 10, 1929, in Camden.
According to the Delaware Jazz & Rhythm Society, the end of Camden's recording days came when the city decided to construct a subway line underneath the church in 1935.
Now a part of the PATCO line, the subway construction created vibrations that interfered with the crude type of sound recording being done at the time. The company moved its recording operations to a New York studio.
By February 1936, the former studio had been converted into a gymnasium for use by the Victor Athletic Association. RCA-Victor kept the building as late as 1947, the Victor Athletic Association and the Victor Employees Salesroom being located there.
But even after the music stopped, RCA continued to make history for Camden. In 1933 an experimental TV station in town broadcast a moving image to a prototype TV set in Collingswood. After World War II, Camden became a major world center for the manufacture of both consumer TV sets and the equipment needed to operate TV studios. And in 1969, RCA literally took Camden to the moon. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon, they communicated with each other and the rest of the world through backpack radio systems made at Camden's RCA facility.
Even after Camden had fallen into a decline, RCA stayed in town for a long time. Fearing their loss, in 1992, the State of New Jersey under the Florio Administration made an agreement with General Electric, then the owner of NBC and successor to the original RCA, that GE would not close the Camden site. The state of New Jersey would build a new high tech facility on the site of the old Campbell factory site and trade these new buildings to GE for the existing old RCA-Victor Buildings. Later, the new high tech buildings would be sold to Martin Marietta. In 1994, Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed to become Lockheed Martin.
In 1997, Lockheed Martin divested the Camden Plant as part of the birth of L-3 Communications.
The "Nipper Building" depicting RCA's famous "His Master's Voice" trademark in its tower windows has since been renovated into a luxury apartment building called "The Victor." Building 8 is to be called "Radio Lofts."
And by the way, Johnson, the repair man, retired a millionaire.
